Lindsey Graham Can’t Find Anything Nice to Say About Tulsi Gabbard

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared hard-pressed for praise beyond personal niceties for Tulsi Gabbard after meeting with Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence.

“We’ve had policy differences. I know her, I like her, you know. She wanted to stay in the JCPOA. I thought that was a mistake,” Graham told CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju on Monday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which Trump withdrew in 2018.

“But, you know, she’ll be serving Trump,” the South Carolina Republican said.

“We’ll see how the hearing goes,” he continued, per footage from WAAY 31 News. Asked whether he was satisfied with Gabbard’s answers, Graham replied, “She’s gonna get back with me, we had a very good meeting. And I’m inclined—well, let’s see what the answers are.”

Gabbard is meeting with senators this week, hoping to alleviate concerns about her sympathetic stances on Russia and Syria’s now-ousted President Bashar Al Assad.

But if Graham has any reservations about Gabbard, that doesn’t mean they will last.

The senator had a sudden change of heart regarding allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct plaguing Trump’s defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, who is also making the rounds on Capitol Hill. Last Tuesday, Graham called the accusations against Hegseth “very disturbing,” saying, “Some of this stuff is going to be difficult.”

Within 24 hours, Graham pivoted, telling Fox News, “I’m not going to make any decision based on an anonymous source.… None of it counts, no rumors, no innuendo.”

Donald Trump mocked Justin Trudeau and Canada after the Canadian prime minister pointed out that Americans are realizing how expensive life would be under Trump’s proposed tariffs.

“Trump got elected on a commitment to make life better and more affordable for Americans, and I think people south of the border are beginning to wake up to the real reality that tariffs on everything from Canada would make life a lot more expensive,” Trudeau said in a speech on Monday, promising retaliation if Trump went ahead with his planned tariffs.

In response, Trump made a Truth Social post shortly after midnight Tuesday referencing his recent dinner with Trudeau and yet again joked about Canada being part of the United States.

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all! DJT,” the post read.

Canada is America’s biggest trading partner, and while 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports would hurt their economy, retaliatory tariffs wouldn’t be good for the U.S. economy, either. Trudeau pointed out that the U.S. gets 65 percent of its crude oil from Canada, along with many other goods, ranging from steel to agricultural products.

Over the weekend, Trump tried to defend his tariff plan on NBC’s Meet the Press but couldn’t promise that it wouldn’t cause higher prices for Americans. He claimed that the U.S. was “subsidizing” Canada and Mexico, and offered a nonsensical solution.

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico, and we’re subsidizing Canada, and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world,” Trump said. “And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.”

Realistically, Trudeau is right that tariffs would hurt both the U.S. and Canadian economies, and it’s hard to see any positive outcomes from a back-and-forth trade war. Trump may be able to threaten politicians in the states, but he might find that foreign leaders aren’t cowed by his brash rhetoric. Mexico has already made threats of its own in response to Trump’s tariffs, for example.

If Canadian and Mexican leaders acted like Trump, it would be “Canada First” versus “Mexico First” versus “America First,” and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump negotiated to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement during his first term, would end up torn to shreds. If Trump isn’t careful, that is exactly what will end up happening, to the detriment of all three countries’ economies.

Law firms won’t touch former New York City mayor and disbarred attorney Rudy Giuliani’s legal problems with a 10-foot pole.

In court documents submitted Monday, the Donald Trump ally lamented that he can’t find a lawyer to represent him while he faces the possibility of civil contempt charges brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a pair of 2020 Georgia poll workers to whom he owes nearly $150 million after he repeatedly defamed them while pushing Trump’s Georgia election conspiracy.

“As I have previously indicated, the primary reason for this requested extension is that I need more time to find an attorney to represent me in this matter, especially now that Plaintiffs are making allegations seeking civil contempt,” Giuliani wrote.

The lack of legal interest, according to Giuliani, is all thanks to U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell’s treatment of January 6 defendants—and has nothing to do with his reported failure to pay his previous attorneys, or with court reports that the 80-year-old is “losing it.”

“We have spoken to four attorneys and each attorney has declined to handle this matter because they believe Your Honor is unreasonable and biased about Trump-related matters and ‘ideological rather than logical,’” Giuliani wrote. “One said it was ‘a foregone conclusion’ and ‘a no-win proposition.’ Among other numerous reasons, your handling of the J6 cases is considered by many to be the most unnecessarily harsh.”

Howell, meanwhile, isn’t even remotely the toughest judge who has sentenced January 6 defendants. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, for instance—who was slated to oversee Trump’s January 6 case before it crashed and burned in the wake of his election win—issued several sentences for the Trumpian rioters that were harsher than what Justice Department prosecutors recommended.

Giuliani’s previous legal representation ditched him last month, declaring in a motion in federal court that they had reached a “fundamental disagreement” with Giuliani. The disgraced New York politico’s lead counsel Kenneth Caruso and attorney David Labkowski argued that they were entitled to peel away from their client, citing a New York rule that grants attorneys the ability to withdraw when a client “insists upon taking action with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement,” when the client insists on “presenting a claim or defense that is not warranted under existing law and cannot be supported by good faith argument,” or when “the client fails to cooperate in the representation or otherwise renders the representation unreasonably difficult for the lawyer to carry out employment effectively.”

Even Fox News isn’t accepting MAGA Republicans’ attempts to discredit accusations against Pete Hegseth without objection.

In an interview Monday, Republican Senator Roger Marshall defended Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense when Fox host John Roberts asked him, quite vaguely, “about the concerns of things that happened in the past.”

Hegseth is currently facing a raft of scandals: He was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017. (Hegseth was not charged but paid the woman a financial settlement.) His drinking habits as a co-host of Fox & Friends reportedly concerned his Fox News colleagues. The New Yorker recently covered a whistleblower report detailing Hegseth’s excessive drinking and financial mismanagement while running a veterans nonprofit.

“Yeah, look. I think that Pete is a good man,” Marshall said. “He is a man of integrity now. He absolutely has my support. I think that these anonymous character assassinations by the media are way over-reported—”

“But some of them weren’t anonymous,” Roberts cut in.

“Well, the ones that I’ve seen are anonymous,” said Marshall, before diverting the topic away from Hegseth’s scandals.

Marshall’s emphasis on the anonymity of the accusations echoes similar defenses of Hegseth by Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who last week attempted to minimize the allegations plaguing Hegseth by pointing to their anonymous sources.

Pushing back against this, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin wrote a blog post last week, noting that anonymous sources are integral to the functioning of the free press. The identities of anonymous sources are, after all, “known to the journalists reporting them,” and the accusations are independently verified or corroborated.

“And, of course,” Rubin wrote, “at least one of the anonymous people featured in reporting about Hegseth isn’t anonymous to Hegseth: The Jane Doe who has accused him of rape and with whom he signed an agreement.”

Not all of the revelations against Hegseth are anonymously sourced, either. As The New York Times reported last month, Hegseth’s mother in 2018 called her son “an abuser of women,” whose “abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out,” in a private email to him that she now disavows.

Hegseth was back on Capitol Hill Monday, continuing his effort to salvage his nomination in meetings with the senators who hold his fate in their hands.

Most Americans support the Affordable Care Act and say the federal government should be responsible for ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage, according to a new Gallup survey.

Gallup on Monday released the findings of its poll, which found that 62 percent of adults “say it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage.” That’s the largest percentage in any year since 2006, when 69 percent of the poll’s respondents agreed with that sentiment.

About 54 percent of U.S. adults approve of the Affordable Care Act, close to the record-high percentage of 55 percent from April 2017, when Donald Trump and the GOP were trying to repeal the law. Support for the bill, passed during President Obama’s first term, is divided along partisan lines: 94 percent of Democrats approve of the ACA, while only 19 percent of Republicans do. Both are record highs.

The survey, which was conducted from November 6 to 20, following the presidential election, reveals Americans are closely divided on whether they preferred a private insurance–based health care system or one that is government-run. About 49 percent prefer the former with 46 percent preferring the latter. The last time the two options polled this closely together was 2017, when 48 percent of respondents preferred private insurance versus 47 percent for a government-run system.

And politically speaking, support for government-run health care and private insurance are also polarized on party lines, with 71 percent of Democrats preferring a government-run system versus 20 percent supporting a private system. Republicans overwhelmingly favor private insurance, with 76 percent of them supporting it as opposed to 21 percent supporting a government-run system.

At a time when Americans across party lines are dissatisfied with the country’s health care system and feel powerless to do anything about it, these polling results are significant. The incoming Trump administration has already suggested that it would do away with the ACA’s key reform of prohibiting insurance coverage denial based on preexisting conditions, and the GOP has been trying to “repeal and replace” the ACA since it was passed.

The next four years will be pivotal for American health care, with Republicans almost certain to use their narrow congressional majority to take aim at the ACA again and institute their own “reforms,” which are almost certain to leave Americans worse off. Every politician, Republican or Democrat, should look at this poll and realize that the public wants better health care coverage, and try to do something positive about it.